The Detroit Free Press caught up with farmers in the area, including Chef Alex Young of Cornman Farms and Zingerman’s Roadhouse to discuss heirloom tomato varieties. Check out the beautiful pictures, and read Susan Selasky’s article.

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We just harvested 900 pounds of tomatoes on Monday and a 300 pound batch of tomato sauce is simmering in the big kettle in the back of the Roadhouse as I write. I’ll be hopping over to the restaurant to check on it after I’m done with this update so I gotta be brief. We planted fall greens and radishes and the carrots and other root veggies are growing nicely. I’ll foliar feed them with compost tea I’ve been brewing…

Its mid- August and we’re knee deep into harvesting.  If I may continue the analogy, we hope to be waist deep into the harvesting in about two weeks and have some time to test out our handling procedures.  We’ve been obsessing about how we will pick 20,000 pounds of tomatoes and 10,000 pounds of peppers and handle the processing in a timely manner for weeks now.  Hey, we may be farmers for the summer but we’re full time foodies in…

Its official, the real tomatoes - big juicy vine ripened summer heirlooms - are finally showing up at the Roadhouse.  At Cornman Farm we’ve got about 35 or 40 different kinds growing and about 10 varieties are producing now with the remainder ripening up nicely.  My dream is people will start asking for their favorite kind and have preferences much like custumers do for oysters or cheeses or bourbon.  Chef Alex’s favorite would have to be the Striped German and I’m…